“David Cameron has joined forces with Labour and Liberal Democrat grandees to campaign for Britain to stay in the European Union. The Prime Minister engaged in some phone canvassing with former party leaders Neil Kinnock and Paddy Ashdown at the headquarters of Stronger In. The session – which also included Labour ex-minister Dame Tessa Jowell and the Green Party’s Darren Johnson – came as the referendum battle intensified” – Daily Mail
“Pro-Cameron ministers cannot wait until what one called ‘sanity day’: June 24. That is when they expect the prime minister will emerge victorious from the EU referendum and begin a ‘unity reshuffle’ of his top team. But Mr Cameron is rated by William Hill at 2-1 to be forced out of office this year and one Tory MP said he was placing a bet. The prime minister and his team will have to raise their game to make sure it does not pay out” – George Parker, Financial Times
>Today:
“Boris Johnson and Michael Gove will call on Friday for billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money that is currently sent to the EU to be spent on the NHS instead. Mr Johnson will open the first day of official campaigning with a speech in which he will say that the UK’s contribution to Brussels would be better spent on building new hospitals” – Daily Telegraph
“No 10 is braced for the publication of the Chilcot report on the Iraq war during the EU referendum campaign. John Penrose, the cabinet office minister, admitted yesterday that there was nothing to stop Sir John Chilcot releasing his report, which exceeds two million words, before June 23. He said the final vetting of the report, to start next week, would take no longer than two weeks” – The Times (£)
“Barack Obama telling British voters to back EU membership will only drive more people to Brexit, a Tory MP claimed tonight. Jacob Rees-Mogg, an arch eurosceptic on the Conservative benches, said the US President had been a failure at the White House and would not hurt the Brexit cause. Mr Obama is expected to back David Cameron’s campaign to keep Britain in the EU when he makes a flying visit to Britain next week” – Daily Mail
“A forest of camera phones shoots up as Boris Johnson takes the stage to warn about the perils of London falling into the hands of the Labour party — ‘a bunch of high-taxing, Hugo Chávez-friendly, Châteauneuf-du-Pape swilling, bendy-bus fetishists’… As usual, Mr Johnson goes down a treat…but the problem is that this is not his election… Three weeks from election day, Zac Goldsmith is lagging behind in the polls in the race to be Mr Johnson’s successor as mayor of London” – Financial Times
“Ken Livingstone launched a typically scathing attack on Boris Johnson today as he warned the public against voting for Brexit as it would give the Mayor of London the keys to Number 10… in a remarkably strong attack even by his standards Red Ken told the public to think of ‘Boris being alone with their daughters’ before voting for Brexit” – Daily Mail
“Resistance to antibiotics is ‘an even greater threat to mankind than cancer’, George Osborne said yesterday as he called for global action to fight the threat from superbugs. The chancellor, who is in Washington at a meeting of the International Monetary Fund, told delegates that ten million people a year could die by 2050 as antibiotics became powerless against common infections” – The Times (£)
“Britain and its European allies have announced new ‘hammer blow’ rules against tax evasion in direct response to the Panama Papers leak that exposed how the world’s richest and most powerful people hide their wealth from the taxman. George Osborne announced on Thursday, in partnership with his counterparts from France, Germany, Spain and Italy, new rules that will lead to the automatic sharing of information about the true owners of complex shell companies and overseas trusts” – Guardian
>Today:
“A Tory MP accused of sparking a Westminster sexism row by labelling a female reporter ‘totty’ today hit out at ‘political correctness’ in the Commons. Colonel Bob Stewart was named by the Daily Mail as the MP who made the jibe at the Spectator’s assistant editor Isabel Hardman earlier this week. The Army veteran appeared to acknowledge responsibility today as he addressed MPs about a massacre he witnessed while serving in the Bosnian war” – Daily Mail
“Jeremy Corbyn has responded to calls for him to step up the fight for Britain to remain in the EU with a speech stressing the need for international cooperation to boost workers’ rights, tackle climate change and crack down on corruption. Speaking to an audience of Labour-supporting students and trade unionists in London, he repeatedly pointed to the shortcomings of the EU in its present form – but said he wanted to forge alliances with leftwing parties across Europe to reform it” – Guardian
>Yesterday:
“The bitter struggle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination erupted into fractious and at times personal attacks on Thursday night as the simmering animosities between the two candidates burst onto a Brooklyn stage. In the ninth and possibly last televised debate between the former secretary of state and US senator from Vermont, the candidates hurled themselves at each other in barely restrained terms” – Guardian